Three Little Words

  The Merritts asked to become my foster parents. On Memorial Day weekend, I moved in with them. I shared Keisha’s room with her, while Matthew and Luke each had their own. Mrs. Merritt worked as a pediatric nurse some nights, so we had to be quiet during the day if she was sleeping. After the cruelty at the Mosses’ and the boisterousness of the shelter, I relished the serene environment.

  The first morning at the Merritts’, I heard Keisha stirring and went to tend her. Mrs. Merritt came in tying her robe. “What are you doing?”

  “She’s wet,” I said.

  “You can’t change her diaper,” Mrs. Merritt responded.

  “I did it all the time at the Mosses’.”

  “In this house I am the mother and you are the child,” she said so adamantly that I stiffened and fluttered my gaze to a corner before she could attack.

  “If you think Keisha needs something, call me or Dad.” She noticed my lower lip quivering. “You aren’t in any trouble. Keisha has a medical problem called diabetes. That means her body doesn’t process sugar normally, and so we sometimes have to give her a quick dose of medicine or something sweet like ice cream.”

  Needing ice cream quickly hardly sounded serious. Whenever Keisha showed worrisome symptoms, the Merritts acted as if it was a life-threatening emergency, which made me feel left out. On the other hand, Luke was so happy to be with me again, he shadowed me. When I wanted privacy in the bathroom, I had to kick his shoe out from the door. “Luke,” I wailed, “stop pestering me!”

  At mealtimes he sometimes pinched me under the table. I would jump and he would laugh, annoying the Merritts. He was worst at bedtime.

  “Brush your teeth right now or you’ll get a time-out,” I warned. He made a raspberry, spitting toothpaste all over the mirror. I tried to wipe it with toilet paper, but I only smeared it more.

  Mrs. Merritt took me aside. “Luke is your brother, not your child.” She used a teacher’s voice. “Do you understand?” I shrugged. “It means that I will tell him when he has to do things and what the consequences for not doing them are.”

  “But he only listens to me!”

  “Was he listening to you in the bathroom?” Mrs. Merritt studied my face to see if I had accepted her point. She tilted her head from side to side as if she knew about my force field and was trying to find a way to penetrate it.

  “Obviously not,” I said to appease her, but she was wrong. If this did not work out, they could move us someplace worse and probably separate us again. My job was to see that that did not happen. She was the one who could pick up the phone at any moment and ask that either one of us be taken away. I crossed my arms and stared back.

  “Now do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said to get her off my back.

  “Okay, now you can have your bath.”

  I grinned. Ever since the disgusting baths at the Mosses’ and the quick showers at Lake Mag, my idea of heaven was soaking in a tub of fresh, bubbly water. Mrs. Merritt shook her head. “I’ve never seen a child who liked a bath as much as you do.”

  A week after I moved in with the Merritts, we traveled to Michigan to attend Leah’s college graduation from Andrews University. I admired the long expanses of lawns mown in precise lines and the huge, graceful trees. Leah, Betsy, and their friends looked like models in shampoo commercials. Best of all, we were treated as if we belonged in their family.

  Still, I knew I did not fit into their world, which was governed by ritual and prayer. If we were good on their Sabbath, we were rewarded with an ice-cream or a Disney video.

  “What are you doing?” Luke asked after church.

  I was trying to do my required reading and ignored him. He reached for the cover. As I held the book behind my head so he could not get it, something boiled up inside me and I grabbed the back of his head and yanked his hair. He ran sobbing into Mrs. Merritt’s arms.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked me.

  “He was being a jerk!”

  “We don’t talk like that in this house,” Mrs. Merritt said.

  “Why don’t you just get rid of me?” I blurted. “I hate it here anyway!” It would be easier if they threw me out before I really wanted to stay. Why had I allowed myself to relax? My nails had even grown out, and Mrs. Merritt had complimented me on them. I deliberately bit them off one by one.

  By now I was accustomed to all sorts of workers coming to visit us in our various foster homes. I resented Lena Jamison because she had taken me away from Adele, and it still irked me that Miles Ferris had robbed me of my possessions. After all, he was the one who transferred me to the Moss home in the first place, so he knew how many clothes and toys I came with, plus he had seen my mother give me the Easy-Bake oven and yet pretended it didn’t exist. Although I sulked about my toys, my darkest moods erupted when I realized that Miles Ferris should have taken me away from the Mosses when the investigators found out that some of us were being abused. He should have known that Mrs. Moss made me say that I was lying. And if he didn’t want to believe me, he should have trusted the teachers who called the hotline so many times. I could not understand how anyone could take me away from my loving relatives and make me live with strangers who were mostly indifferent and sometimes brutal.

  I no longer had faith in any of the caseworkers. So when Mary Miller stopped by to check on Keisha when I was visiting Luke at the Merritts’ shortly before I moved in, I assumed she was just another one and ignored her. She was dressed in tailored slacks and a crisp blouse. Her blond hair was precision cut, and her jewelry was subdued yet elegant. She looked more like a Ralph Lauren model than a child welfare worker. She was polite to me, and I liked her serene smile.

  “We’ve wondered why Keisha has a guardian, while these kids”—Mrs. Merritt indicated Luke and me—“who’ve already been in foster care for five years, don’t.”

  “There aren’t enough of us to go around,” Mary Miller explained. “Babies, especially those who are medically needy, are at the top of the list.”

  “Ashley shouldn’t have been mingling with those tough teens at Lake Mag,” Mrs. Merritt grumbled, “and this boy needs services he isn’t getting.”

  “I’ll talk with my coordinator and see if she will appoint me to their case.”

  The next time I saw Mary Miller, I’d been living with Luke at the Merritts’ for a couple of weeks. She crouched next to me and said, “I’m your Guardian ad Litem.”

  “Is that like a guardian angel?” I asked.

  Luke looked up from his toy cars on the carpet. “Do you have wings?”

  “Sorry, no,” she said with a throaty laugh. Noticing my cynical look, she added quickly, “I’m also not a caseworker. I will represent your best interests in court.”

  I diverted my stare to the wall and made no pretense that I was paying attention to her. “What can I do for you?” she inquired. Until then, nobody had ever asked me that question.

  “Nothing.” I shrugged.

  “Let me know if you think of something later.” Mary Miller straightened her back.

  “Wait! Can you get my Easy-Bake oven and my Barbie radio?”

  “I can’t buy you things.”

  “My mother gave them to me.”

  “Ashley arrived with almost nothing,” Mrs. Merritt explained. “Her brother didn’t come with any toys either, although he claims he had a helicopter.”

  “I can try to retrieve those for you. Anything else?”

  “I’ve been in foster care my whole life!” I sighed. “If I could only be with my mother, everything would be wonderful.” I gave her my most winsome smile.

  “You want to be with your mother,” Mary repeated to be certain she had it right.

  “Yes, but she doesn’t always come to visit when she says she will. I don’t think anyone helps her. Could you?”

  I was always hungry for anyone to give me one-on-one attention, so I was pleased when Mrs. Merritt took me aside one day. “You’re going to visit your mother today,
but Luke will stay home.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Can you be a big girl and not mention it to him so he doesn’t feel left out?”

  “I know that he doesn’t belong to her anymore.” I tried to make myself sound mature, but there was a tinge of bragging in my voice because my mother wanted me and not him.

  I was dressed and waiting for Miles Ferris at the appointed time, but he was late. When the phone rang, I heard Mrs. Merritt say, “Yes, Miles. I understand.” My heart thudded with every syllable. “I’ll tell her.” Obviously, my mother was canceling again.

  Mrs. Merritt came into the living room shaking her head. “Can you imagine? Your mother and Mary Miller are waiting on you, but Miles forgot to pick you up. He’s on his way now.”

  When I arrived at the visit, I flew into my mother’s arms. “I thought you forgot about me!” I was on the verge of tears.

  “That man didn’t arrange for someone to bring you here.” My mother stared accusingly at Mr. Ferris.

  I pouted. “You said you would be back soon, and it’s been weeks and weeks.”

  “I had to go to South Carolina for a bit,” she cooed. “There are a lot of arrangements to be made, Sunshine, but you’ll be living with us soon.”

  My mother introduced me to Deputy Sheriff Babette Burke and her son, Drew. “This is my roommate.”

  I noticed Mary Miller in the background. Her expression was not as composed as when she visited us at the Merritt home; in fact, she seemed aggravated by something—probably the fact that I’d arrived late, although it had not been my fault.

  “I brought you a present.” My mother handed me a jewelry box inlaid with flowers and a little clock. “It’s a music box.” She wound the key.

  I opened the lid expecting to hear “You Are My Sunshine.” Some other tune tinkled out. “What’s that song?”

  “It’s by some famous composer,” she said lamely. “I wanted to get ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ but they didn’t have it.”

  I stroked the polished lid. “That’s okay.” I slipped into my mother’s lap. She caressed my arm as the music box played each tinny note increasingly slower. My eyes began to sting. I pressed my face against my mother’s chest and sobbed. The final plink of the tune was suspended in the air expectantly, waiting for the next note that would never come. Something else had ended midsong. Nobody in that room knew what I sensed: that I would never see my mother again.

  In the early days I thought that Mary Miller was just a well-mannered woman who checked on our progress. Behind the scenes, though, she became our champion, and it would be years before I realized everything she had accomplished on Luke’s and my behalf. It would be years, too, before I understood that she had always kept my best interests in mind, even if I wouldn’t have agreed with her decisions at the time.

  Mary reviewed our legal, criminal, medical, and psychological records. She was aghast that we had been in legal limbo for so long and thought that five years should have been plenty of time for my mother to get her act together. Mary was suspicious of my mother because Lorraine claimed she had held a job for more than a month, but Mary learned that it had lasted for one day. My mother also claimed to be sober, yet she had tested positive for cocaine right after my last visit with her.

  I would have been horrified if I had known that two days after I received the music box, Mary Miller wrote Mr. Ferris requesting that parental contact be stopped altogether. She also asked the Florida Department of Children and Families’ lawyers to begin termination proceedings for Dusty Grover’s rights to Luke and my mother’s rights to me.

  Dealing with my mother was a legal chore, but Mary met her match in Marjorie Moss. Like an ambassador to a hostile foreign country, my Guardian ad Litem was educated, elegant, and intimidating; however, Mrs. Moss ruled her fiefdom with an iron fist. So far, no brat or bureaucrat had ever been able to outsmart her. At first Mary had not been sure whom to believe about the goings-on in the Moss household. Mrs. Merritt was convinced that the Mosses had been abusive, but the foster care supervisor said the Mosses were model foster parents who even taught the training classes for other foster parents. The caseworker blamed my problems on my mother, claiming that I did not start my “false accusations” until after she had renewed her visitations.

  When Mary stopped by the department’s office, someone pointed out Mrs. Moss. Mary marched right up to her and asked for my possessions. Mary offered to drive out to Plant City to pick them up that afternoon. Mrs. Moss said she was busy that day but agreed to give them to Miles Ferris.

  “When can I visit my mom?” I pestered Mr. Ferris when I saw him at the Merritts’.

  “That’s not a good idea right now,” he responded.

  “Why?” I demanded. “Aren’t you supposed to take me for monthly visits?”

  “Actually, the judge is going to decide that,” Mr. Ferris said, and went to play with Luke, who did not ask tough questions.

  The Merritts took me to see Dr. Flanders, another doctor who asked me how I was feeling. I shrugged. “Are you happy? Sad? Angry?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Tell me about your father.”

  “I don’t have one, except Dusty, who is really only Luke’s father.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He steals and he tried to murder my mother twice.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “I love her more than anything in the world. And I don’t see why I can’t be with her. She has a house now and she’s waiting for me.”

  “Does waiting make you angry?” he asked.

  I stared him down. “It makes me tired.”

  School kept my mind off my worries most of the time. The Merritts enrolled us at the Seventh-day Adventist Academy. I liked this private school with its small classes, where I received a lot of attention from Ms. Holback. Because Luke had been so disruptive, he had to repeat kindergarten, and he continued to bother me whenever he felt the need to quell his anxieties.

  Why didn’t anyone realize that Luke was the problem? I would ask myself. If it were not for him, I would be with my mother. I believed it was my responsibility to stick with him no matter what, yet I resented the fact that I had to give up what was dearest to me because I was all that he had. Whenever the authorities separated us, I would be slightly relieved, but then the worry over how he was doing would only add to my anxieties. I was better off knowing he was okay rather than imagining that another Mrs. Moss might be abusing him. All my life—even today—I’ve wondered how to balance my responsibilities to him with my need to look out for myself.

  The Merritts led an orderly life that I found comforting. We prayed before meals and attended Saturday services at the Tampa First Seventh-day Adventist Church. Saturday nights we had popcorn and movies. Television was restricted, but they had a large collection of approved videos.

  “Are you going to get a pumpkin for Halloween?” I asked Mrs. Merritt when I saw some at an outdoor stand.

  “We don’t believe in doing that,” she replied.

  “Do you celebrate birthdays?” I asked anxiously, since mine was approaching.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Merritt promised.

  When we were getting ready for bed, I became annoyed because Luke kept running into my room. The third time I punched him. He ran sobbing to Mrs. Merritt. A few days later she took me to a nurse-practitioner, who listened to my yearnings for my mother.

  “Some medication for depression might help her,” the nurse suggested.

  “I have to ask her caseworker to sign the medical forms,” Mrs. Merritt replied.

  I overheard some angry phone calls. “Either I get them some help or I can’t keep them both,” Mrs. Merritt told Mr. Ferris.

  I also overheard her conversation with Mary Miller. “Yes, Mary, I agree. Lake Mag would be bad even on a temporary basis….” I tensed like violin strings tuned to the highest note. “No, not an emergency … of course she needs to say good-bye this time.”

  “Ashley, today will
be your last day at school,” Mrs. Merritt warned me before dropping me off. I did not need any further explanation.

  Ms. Holback had arranged a little farewell party and gave me a card saying, It has been a joy to have you in my class. Although I will miss you, I’m so excited about you getting ready for adoption. We will keep you in our prayers. We love you. Each of my classmates had added a smiley-face sticker and signed it.

  When I arrived home, I found that Mrs. Merritt had packed everything I owned. “I don’t want to be adopted!” I snapped. “I want to go back to my mother.”

  “That may not be God’s plan for you.”

  “Is L-Luke coming too?”

  “No. He’s making progress here.”

  “I can make progress,” I choked.

  Later that afternoon Mr. Merritt drove me to Violet Chavez’s home in Riverview, about thirty miles southeast of Tampa. After leaving the highway, we crossed the Alafia River, passed some strawberry fields, then turned into a shaded lane where a long driveway led to a yellow house surrounded by towering trees. Mr. Merritt carried in my trash bags and left them piled in the hallway. After a few awkward minutes he left.

  “Welcome, my dear!” called Violet Chavez.

  Ethnic masks lined the walls and artificial floral arrangements filled the shadows. My gaze fell on a pumpkin decoration. “Do you celebrate Halloween?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Violet Chavez replied. “Do you have a costume?”

  “No. The Merritts don’t believe in Halloween.”

  Madeline, Mrs. Chavez’s teenage daughter, gestured with her hands. “Look at that red hair! Don’t you think she’d be the perfect Annie?”

  “We’ll have the dress made,” Mrs. Chavez said. “And we’ll curl her hair.”

  “Or get a wig,” Madeline suggested. “Would you like that?”

  Annie! Wow! I think I’m going to like it here, I said to myself, and started dragging my plastic bags down the hallway to my new bedroom.

  “Come, help me make dinner,” Mrs. Chavez called in a musical accent.